


Merops apiaster

by brigitttt



Series: Ipheion uniflorum [3]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Museum, Anal Fingering, Animals, Established Relationship, Isthiman Vacation, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Damen (Captive Prince), Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:36:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brigitttt/pseuds/brigitttt
Summary: Damen and Laurent are on their visit to Isthima. Damen thinks about a lot of things, namely: Laurent, fauna of the Southern Islands, and his past.





	Merops apiaster

**Author's Note:**

> A day of the Isthima trip! Shouldn’t be necessary to have read the first works, but encouraged if you’re up for reading another 40k. Sexy stuff here is also not til the last scene, so it’s technically skippable? If that’s your thing? Have fun, love you
> 
> (Many many thanks to thatgothlibrarian, for letting me scream at him!!)

Damen arises early to the dry summer sun just edging over the horizon, and makes coffee to the sound of warblers and gulls, the salt smell of the sea drifting in through the wide open windows of the bed and breakfast invigorating him for the morning ahead. He opens the door to the bedroom as quietly as possible, laden with a tray of two mugs and a bowl of fruit salad, to find Laurent exactly where he’d left him in bed, shiny blond hair and the barest fair eyebrows peeking just over the edge of the comforter. Damen’s heart seizes itself and he grins, immeasurably glad of his circumstances. 

They couldn’t have come to Isthima at a better time; Damen had only just disentangled himself from the spines of his father’s academic expectations, through numerous phone calls to the university and his parents, and he was already looking forward to their return to Marlas once Laurent finished his . . . well, whatever this museum associate business is, it isn’t entirely clear to Damen. He seems happy enough with it though, and Damen was enormously relieved that nothing too dramatic had come of his current boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend fraternizing in the Royal Museum of Ios. It appears to Damen that Jokaste had known about his and Laurent’s relationship like a psychic power wielded by a powerful seer, known both all along and just this second, as soon as they’d arrived in Ios for the summer. Damen tries to interfere as infrequently as possible, in any case. 

Laurent shifts his legs under the covers, and his eyebrows pinch together before his head disappears fully under the blanket. Damen enters the rest of the way into the room to put down the breakfast tray, and sits down on the bed. An amorphous fabric mound of a limb slides slowly over to where Damen’s sitting, and bumps into his thigh before moving to fold over his hand. Damen smiles.

“Good morning,” he says to the bedclothes. A small wordless sound travels back through them and the blob under the blanket retracts. The covers rustle while Damen leans over to get a mug of coffee, and by the time he turns back, Laurent has the top of them folded down around his chest and his arms out on top. Laurent still has his eyes closed, though, brows furrowed minutely against the gradually brightening room. He reaches out a hand towards Damen and clears his throat. 

“Coffee,” says Laurent. Damen only smiles and waits until Laurent’s eyes crack open to hand the mug over. 

Damen washes up in the fancy outdoor shower attached to their balcony, which offers a sensational vista to use shampoo in front of. There’s a normal bath in the washroom, but they’d found the outdoor one almost immediately when they arrived here a couple days ago. Laurent is only partially opposed to the premise in that he himself will not use it but he certainly encourages Damen to do so. He doesn’t mind at all, though, because he gets to see the furious blush on Laurent’s face when he walks back in naked as he dries off. Laurent’s up and standing by the small table in the sitting room, picking at the fruit salad bowl. He scoffs at Damen when he drips water on the floor, his towel ineffectively slung around his shoulders.

“Barbarian,” Laurent accuses, but Damen smirks and approaches with widespread arms, threatening him with his wet skin. Laurent just evades him by circling around the table, narrowing his eyes, still blushing. 

Damen laughs, but relents to go eat something and get dressed, leaving Laurent to his own morning devices. He never actively tries to be imposing, especially with his own nudity around Laurent, regardless of whether it’s a sexual situation or not. Laurent has explained, in gradual parts, the way his past affects his current actions, and Damen has tried to reply with as unintimidating encouragement as possible. He might never admit to Laurent that he finds it tricky, sometimes, to be in the thick of things and still remember to hold him in the proper places, say the right things, but, well. There’s a lot more to lose than just a night of sex if he messes up, things that are honest and emotional and lovely to hold, and he truly doesn’t want that. Damen’s a quick learner when he has this kind of incentive. 

There’s a quiet knock on the bedroom doorframe before Damen manages to put a shirt on. When he turns around, Laurent is standing like a mirror to him, hiking pants and socks on but no shirt. Damen rakes his eyes over the beautifully pale chest in front of him, and finds that Laurent is looking back at him with similarly confident ease. Damen is struck still when Laurent steps forward, reaching for the shirt clutched in Damen’s hands; he reminds himself of the roe deer he left Pallas to prepare before they left for Ios, flighty in the Delphan twilight, dumb and frozen.

Laurent goes up on his toes and brings a hand softly to Damen’s cheek before he kisses him, leaning slightly against Damen’s stomach. He immediately kisses back, opening his mouth to deepen it, looping a hand around to cup the back of Laurent’s neck. Damen follows blindly and besottedly, slinging an arm around his waist when Laurent drops down from his toes, extracting Damen’s shirt from his grasp and throwing it onto the bed. He runs his hands over Damen’s stomach and chest, and it’s a little ticklish, cold fingers brushing over the hair near his belly button. Damen unconsciously makes a noise in his throat and Laurent’s hand comes up to mirror Damen’s own, at his neck. Their lips part, humid breath hanging in the small space between them. Laurent’s lips are red and wet and Damen wants to lick across them again; there’s a weight on the top of his shoulders other than Laurent’s forearm around him, and he feels like he’s sinking through the floorboards up to his knees at the sight. Laurent leans forward and Damen closes his eyes again in the bliss.

“I was watching you at the shower,” says Laurent in a whisper. Damen was well aware of his audience earlier, but he’s absolutely helpless to play along. 

“Like anything you saw?” Damen’s voice is so conspicuously breathless. Laurent’s fingers are teasing at his hipbone and the sensation radiates low in his groin; Laurent surely must know what he’s doing.

“A couple things,” Laurent breathes into the patch of skin between Damen’s ear and jaw and Damen’s mouth opens in delectation, purely of its own will. The fingers hook shallowly into the waistband of Damen’s trousers and follow the hem along the front, passing deliciously close underneath the centre of his belly. Damen’s hand is trembling at Laurent’s neck.

Before he can reorder his mind in the formation of coherent thoughts, Laurent squeezes the one hand at Damen’s neck, and slips the other out of his pants, flowing back out of the non-existent grip of Damen’s arms. Damen is a little ashamed to admit that he staggers forward a step when he opens his eyes. Laurent lets a playful smile onto his face before he turns to pluck a long-sleeve button-up from his bag on the floor and saunters from the room. Damen, heart still gasping and already embarrassingly half-hard, collapses onto the bed near where his shirt landed. Laurent’s going to kill him one of these days and it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to him.

# 

It’s not as hot in the morning here, on the west side of the island, but by the afternoon this will change drastically. Laurent wanted to walk up the tallest hill in the vicinity, a small hike away from the B&B, and Damen had agreed on the condition that they did it before lunchtime, to minimize the sun exposure. It’s rhythmic and repetitive, to take solid steps up the gradual slope, feeling Laurent trekking along behind him. 

There’s no rush at all, just the quiet rustle of dry bushes under the slight breeze. The view from under a third of the way up is already gorgeous; the shrubs on this side of the hill are hip height at most, so there’s not much chance of anything obscuring the brilliance of the ocean, already sparkling in the morning sunlight. Damen remembers this pristine blue-green colour of the water from his entire childhood, how it soaks up the light and radiates it back out in clear, salty waves. Maybe they’ll go swimming later, when it’s too hot to do anything else.

Damen stops and looks back when he doesn’t feel Laurent as close anymore. He’s crouched down, with his knees almost in his armpits, hands moving by a bush. Damen clomps over in his boots.

“Watch out for snakes,” he says, not bothering to keep the agitation out of his voice. He distinctly remembers Kastor, age sixteen, kicking these same Isthiman bushes and finding a dice snake, throwing it high up in the air with his boot, ridiculously writhing, a sharp hiss moving unnaturally. It had landed near Damen’s six-year-old feet, smelling bad and playing dead. Damen had started crying out of shock, his face turning bright red, but too scared to move, and their dad had scolded the both of them. Kastor’s mother, back at the suite at the B&B, had let Damen shove his head in her stomach, and soothed him until he cried himself out and fell asleep in her lap.

Laurent doesn’t acknowledge Damen’s warning. “It’s oleander,” he says, and this is unfortunately one of the plants Damen knows too much about. Laurent is lightly stroking a delicate, pale pink flower. “It’s so far away from water,” he says, almost to himself, and glances around the hillside with a serious brow before looking up at Damen. He’s hovering over Laurent now, anxious to move on, illogically stuck on poisons and venoms and toxins, cardiac glycosides. Laurent is contrarily calm and ponderous. He motions for Damen to crouch down with his hand. Damen shakes his head stubbornly, lips tight, cheeks tense. Laurent rocks back onto his heels and stands up.

“What’s wrong? It’s not going to bite you,” Laurent says with a bluntness Damen is only marginally used to by now. Damen doesn’t really know what’s wrong, other than the poisonous plant and the thought of snakes, so he shakes his head again, and childishly reaches for Laurent’s hand. This kind of muteness is so unlike him, too; Damen can’t remember the last time he felt this way, but he thinks maybe it’s the thought of anything happening to Laurent that he can’t fix that would strangle him from the inside. What he knows about Laurent’s past already puts him on the defensive, a dense, jagged clump of metal in his stomach. 

Damen doesn’t want to think about it anymore, so he brings Laurent’s hand up to kiss the knuckles, like a silent apology. Laurent gives him a scrutinising look, but keeps his hand in Damen’s after. They keep walking steadily upwards, now connected by the bridge of their hold on each other, but with their heads down, looking only where their feet are landing. 

They stop to rest and look at the view a couple minutes later. Damen takes a water canteen out of his small sporty backpack that Laurent made fun of him for having, and they both gulp some down. Laurent looks exceptional in the morning sun; his hair is already bleached quite white-blond from just their time in Ios, and despite his complaints about burns and skin cancer, Damen still finds the faint and tiny freckles along his nose to be very sweet. Laurent, probably sensing the direction of Damen’s gaze, turns his head to face him.

“ _Garrigue_ ,” he says, incomprehensibly. 

“Pardon?” 

“ _Maquis_?” Laurent’s teasing smile is returning. Damen’s still confused.

“Uh, I don’t think I know . . .” Damen drifts. Is his Veretian really this lacking?

“Scrubland. Shrubs,” says Laurent, and he laughs at whatever wonky face Damen is making. 

“We call it _phrygana_ down here,” Damen says, instead of grumbling at Laurent’s smugness. There’s a thick bunch of purple and green down by his foot, which he nudges with the toe of his boot, before asking, “How many can you name?”

Laurent hums pensively and looks at the surrounding vegetation for a second before speaking. “ _Thymus serpyllum_ , wild thyme,” he says, pointing at the nudged shrub. He hooks his hand into Damen’s and they start walking, Laurent pointing out plants.

“ _Salvia_ something, _Rosmarinus_ – you can guess that one, _Cistus ladanifer_ , lots of _Artemisia_ . . .” He points at some of the bigger trees in the distance. “ _Quercus coccifera_ , the kermes oak.”

Damen has nothing to add, other than exclamations of wonderment, clutching Laurent’s hand as they walk and smiling in his direction every time a new name is voiced. They’re almost at the top, Laurent running out of new plants to name.

“Are you sufficiently aroused, then?” he asks suddenly, like he’s got the upper hand. Damen’s eyes go wide in an instant and he whips his head around.

“W-what?”

Laurent’s expression turns to one of genuine astonishment. “Do you really not remember?”

“Remember what?” Damen’s off kilter now.

“That day, when you gave me the flower,” says Laurent. “The snowdrops. You said something like how you find it hot when I say scientific names.” 

Laurent’s flushing now but Damen’s pretty sure it’s just from the building heat in the air; the only one who should be the least embarrassed right now should be _him_ , not Laurent with apparently an elephant’s memory. He can’t for the life of him remember when he said anything like that, but, well, isn’t that just like Laurent to remember something that was probably a flirtatious, offhand comment. Damen says so many stupid things all the time that they all converge into mist in his brain ten minutes later, unless it was so remarkably stupid that Nikandros subsequently used it against him. 

“Uh, I guess I thought I was being funny,” says Damen, like a question. He looks back at his own feet, big and awkward in his hiking boots against the thin, limey soil. He bites his lip and looks at Laurent out of the corner of his eye.

Laurent has his back to him, and Damen thinks maybe he's said something wrong this time, that it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Laurent’s shoulders start shaking and, to Damen’s burgeoning dread, he starts walking more determinedly up the hill. Damen watches him stop after a couple paces and turn around.

Laurent lets out a big, bright laugh, and his smile is practically effervescent. The way he’s standing above him on the hill, surrounded by bushes in the shining heat of the sun, makes Damen want to pledge himself for eternity. Laurent’s still laughing. 

“I just –” and Laurent can barely breath from the mirth. “When the hell would me naming plants for you ever be sexy?” He laughs again. “Can you – imagine us –” and the laughter is streaming out now, an unstoppable wave of joy, and Damen is nodding along now, his smiling is so contagious. “Together in bed and I just –” and suddenly they're both doubled over now on this hillside, no tension at all, just the all too easily imagined scene of Laurent very seriously saying the name for, he doesn’t know, a daisy or something, and Damen responding just as humourless and austere with _Glis glis_ , the edible dormouse, before smushing their faces together. It’s so ridiculous that it doesn’t even need to be said. 

Damen’s got his hands down on his knees and he’s almost got his breath back, still giggling every couple of seconds. Above him, Laurent has a hand on his hip and a smirky grin. Damen, full with some warm, unnameable feeling, musters the strength to catch up to him, and they walk the rest of the way up with only the heat and their own levity around them. 

They reach the top of the hill in no time at all, and there’s finally nothing above them, no more to climb, and an unimpeded view of the wide southern ocean in front of them. Around to the east they can see most of Isthima, too, although this isn’t the tallest hill on the island by far. Damen’s got a firm grip on Laurent’s hand, because of the height and the uncertain, gravelly slope, and because he loves that he has this right now. This, the secret of Laurent’s easy laughter, his teasing and clever mind. Of course, Laurent’s beauty as well, his stunning looks, the faces of himself that he’s only shown to Damen, turned around like a weighted and multi-sided die. But also, the sharp ends, the barbs that stick into places deep in Laurent’s gut; he’s shown some of those to him, and Damen strives to love them as much as they are irremovable. All in all, there are many things Damen couldn’t bear to lose without a fight, and he is certain of that.

#

The bed and breakfast serves orzo salad and fresh caught octopus for lunch, and then it’s off to the water in the face of ever-building heat. 

They could just as easily go to the beach right below their suite, but Damen knows of one a little ways off around the curve of the island, smaller, but with fewer tourists. He remembers how Kastor had dragged him along year after year to try to find the best beach on the west side of the island; they’d never come to a consensus, but this one had always been a top contender, with its bright white limestone cliff face and sea-level ledge, gradually fading into sand further out. There are all sorts of nooks and crannies along the rock that smaller kids could fit into easily, but which Damen at his height now can only stoop outside of. The beach stretches around a curve in the island, so it’s less like a cove, and more like a rounded, rocky point. It’s pleasant, to say the very least.

Damen can’t help but try to see Laurent’s reaction to it when they come out from the tree cover at the southeastern edge of the beach. He’s already finding it hard to keep his eyes off of Laurent in his dark blue shorts and clingy white swim shirt, and Damen manages to drag his gaze up to his face just in time to see the bright blue eyes light up from more than just the sun’s reflection off the cliff and water.

“To your tastes?” He asks, placing his hand on Laurent’s waist. 

“It’s . . .” starts Laurent, still blinking at the view, before he seems to catch himself and turn to Damen. “You’re not even looking at it yourself,” he says with a knowing look.

Damen laughs. They walk along nearer to the cliffs, watching the tide go slowly out, dark-skinned children running around on the newly exposed rocks and little tidepools. A few keep running back and forth between the water and their towel-lounging parents, but most seem to be unsupervised for the most part. Laurent points it out to Damen.

“A lot of the island children just have free rein on the beach. They know what not to do,” says Damen, relaxed. It’s true, though, the only kids who did stupid things on the beach were tourists like he and Kastor had been. Laurent frowns minutely. Damen’s not quite sure what to make of his expression, but decides that rounding the beach point is a better goal than examining inscrutabilities. 

There’s a larger group of children assembled in their path further along the curve of the beach, all around the indiscernible ages of youth between nine and fourteen. 

“What are they saying?” Laurent asks in Veretian. The fast-paced and slang-filled Isthiman-Akielon dialect the kids are speaking is almost too much for Damen to understand himself; he must’ve become unfamiliar in all his time away at university, after his family stopped coming here regularly. He remembers being able to argue and joke with the island kids well enough when he was younger. He listens carefully, now.

“They’re saying, um . . . something’s very cool?” he says, pausing to listen harder. He cranes his neck in the direction of the children. “‘Look at that,’” Damen translates directly. “It’s – it’s wriggling? Squirming?”

Laurent’s already pulling Damen’s hand in order to walk over. The meet the edge of the circle of children and it becomes clear that the exclamations were in wonderment over a large jellyfish stranded on the ground. A couple of the children have sticks and are poking at it, others are shrieking and goading from the side. Only a couple of them acknowledge Laurent and Damen. 

“Do you know what kind it is?” Laurent asks in Akielon, and Damen turns back to squint at the jellyfish. A young girl next to them responds first, with childlike enthusiasm; her hair is up in braids and she can’t be much older than eight or nine.

“ _Médousa_ , _médousa_!” she says, and grabs Laurent by his hand and the fabric of his shorts, pulling at him a little. Laurent smiles at her and leans down. 

“What kind of jellyfish?” he asks again, to the girl this time, speeding the last word up like she did. Something in Damen’s chest jumps at the friendly image of Laurent speaking encouragingly with this girl, holding her hand, and he unconsciously squeezes the other hand he has in his own. Laurent straightens up.

“She’s saying something about eggs,” he says to Damen.

“Must be a fried-egg jellyfish then, they’re pretty overpopulated down here, I think.” Damen leans down to the girl, and affects a serious look and the best Isthiman accent he can achieve. “Do you think you can bring us closer, brave sister?” he asks, and her face becomes determined. She grabs onto his shorts too, with a tug that makes his hand go flying to his waistband to keep them secure. Laurent laughs, like a traitor. 

The girl pulls them both closer up, the other children making way for them. The jellyfish is quite large on the ground, deflated a little now that it’s out of the water. A boy keeps poking it with his stick, making it jiggle. Damen squats down to hover over it, and the girl starts speaking very quickly.

“She says the egg is on top and the – stingers? Are, uh, on the bottom,” Damen says, head turned up to Laurent. He smiles. “As jellyfish tend to be arranged,” he adds slyly in Veretian.

“Don’t be mean,” Laurent retorts. He tilts his head to the girl again, and Damen’s eyes flick down to where they’re still holding hands, the child’s dark fingers peeking out of Laurent’s pale grip.

“Do the stingers hurt you?” Laurent asks in Akielon, and the girl shakes her head. She seems to understand that Damen is the one to direct her answers to, and gestures with her free hand while she speaks.

“I think the adult medusa only eat plankton. She’s . . . describing the way that – _skoumprí_ hide in their drift?” says Damen. He stands up, wracking his brain for the word he can’t remember and brushing sand off his shin. “What’s the Veretian for it? _Maque_ . . .”

Laurent sputters out a laugh. “ _Maquereau_?”

“That’s it,” Damen says with a smile. “What’s funny?”

Laurent glances surreptitiously at the little girl still holding his hand as they exit the group around the jellyfish. Damen senses that the answer is impolite, but this only makes him want to know more.

“Mackerel is a . . . slang term. It means, uh –” another glance at the girl. “ _Proxénète. De prostituées_.” Laurent’s face remains unflappable, but his ears are turning pink. Damen thinks he startles the girl with how hard he laughs, eyes crinkling shut, but when he opens them again, he turns to see Laurent isn’t beside him anymore. 

“Ah, _merde_ ,” Laurent says with a hiss. He’s down on his hands and knees on the rock, the girl standing next to him with wide eyes and her hands over her mouth. Damen strides back in a bound and puts a hand on Laurent’s shoulder.

“I just slipped, I’m fine,” he says, his tone matter-of-fact, sitting up on his knees and holding one of his hands in front of him. He’s scratched up on one palm, and probably on his knees, too, and the girl gasps quietly. Damen watches Laurent notice their audience, how he tucks his hair behind his ear even though it’s already there, and holds out his hand to her.

“See?” Laurent says gently in Akielon. “All fine,” but Damen thinks the girl might be overwhelmed, seesawing from the excitement of the jellyfish and the small shock of Laurent’s fall, because her cheeks go red behind her hands and her eyes start welling up with tears.

“Oh, sister,” says Damen in whatever semi-paternal voice is managing to come out of his chest. “Can you hold his hand to help the hurt?” Laurent gives him a weird look, but it works, thankfully, and the girl clasps onto his hand with both of hers, the tears drying up quickly.

The girl speaks very slowly to Laurent, for maximum comprehension. “Yia-yia says to wash a scrape in the sea.” Laurent flicks a look to Damen.

“Oh!” Damen gasps exaggeratedly. “My grandmother says the same thing!” They collect themselves and troop over to the water; as he thought, Laurent’s knees are scuffed too. Laurent diligently follows the girl’s instructions to stick his hand in the wash of the waves, carefully, so as not to pick up any sand on it. Damen stands a step back to give them space, but sees it clearly when they half-turn back from the water, the girl gripping firmly onto Laurent’s wrist to bring it to her mouth. He sees Laurent’s shoulders tense and his mouth cement into a straight line when she kisses the heel of his hand. He sees Laurent freeze in place when he’s released and the girl shouts an ‘ _all better now!_ ’ into the air. 

An older girl from the jellyfish group, a sister, probably, calls out in their direction, and the girl says a quick goodbye before running over. Laurent passes behind Damen and grabs him by the hand while he’s distracted, and starts to pull them away to the other half of the beach. Damen knows enough to keep from asking if he’s alright. Laurent still has that tension in his expression that means he’s trying hard not to think about something, but also is unable to let himself be distracted; it’s a terribly thin line to tread.

They end up walking nearly all the way over to the opposite end of the beach, where the cliff slopes back down and an uneven set of rock steps have been inset into the hill. Damen hasn’t looked over at Laurent yet, but it must not be too bad if they’re still holding hands. He stops under one of the lower reaching cliff trees to look out over the water, and Laurent leans into his arm. After a minute, he releases a big breath through his mouth, almost timed with the sighing of the ocean’s waves. Damen chances a look out the side of his eye.

Laurent’s staring at him with a pensive but unplaceable look on his face. He closes his eyes very slowly, and leans forward imperceptibly, but Damen knows what this is now, and bends down the rest of the way to place a kiss on Laurent’s forehead. They each pull back to squint through the blinding early afternoon light reflecting of the water. 

“Are your hands okay?” asks Damen. This isn’t quite what he wants to ask, but he thinks maybe Laurent understands what he means.

“They’re better now,” says Laurent quietly into the air in front of both of them, and Damen hums. Laurent says, “You were very good with her.” 

Damen muffles a laugh, and turns them back around towards the path up the slope. “I never really know what I’m doing, but it all seems to work out alright,” he says, and he catches Laurent’s smile before he turns his head away. 

#

There’s a small combination visitor centre and local museum on Isthima that’s not a bad walk from the beach, and that, without any prompting from Damen, Laurent had looked up online and made a note of to visit. Damen hadn’t been sure of the state it would be in since the last time he’d visited with his family; he’d been fifteen and Kastor hadn’t come with them, much too busy at twenty-five for visits to an island with limited cell service, and Damen had been at that horrible age when it wasn’t cool to like the things you liked as a kid. That trip had still become somewhat wistful in memory, despite his dad’s near-constant frustration with Damen’s obstinacy and Hypermenestra’s waning ability to mediate either of their stubborn moods. 

When they reach the walkway leading up to it, the centre’s wood siding looks so familiar that it hits Damen somewhere buried in his chest that he’d forgotten about. He goes quite quiet, feeling a strange sort of sentimentality, touched by a memory of a place with neither positive nor negative emotions, just a neutral constant.

Laurent lets go of his hand to bound up to the door, flashing a small smile his way before pulling on the handle and disappearing inside. Damen steels himself before he walks in.

Not much has changed in over a decade. There’s multiple little rooms with open arches instead of doors, as well as the main lobby with a couple old armchairs, brochure display, and currently unmanned information desk. A lizard tank has been put in, though, just to the side of the window, and Damen peers through the glass at its inhabitants. There doesn’t seem to be much in there, only two house geckos that he can find, although he gives up his search relatively quickly to go see where Laurent is.

The next room is more brightly lit, with western-facing windows in addition to the overhead lights. There are boards lining the walls describing local flora and fauna, ecosystems and habitats. Damen’s sure there’s plenty of lines in there about how everything’s ‘ _kept in a delicate balance_ ,’ and can’t help but smirk to himself when he glosses his eyes over the displays. 

Laurent is critically examining a poster about seagrasses when Damen comes up behind him. He scoffs quietly at something but continues reading anyways, and Damen can’t help but smile at the skeptical and amused expression on Laurent’s face.

“When did you say you were last here?” Laurent asks with a smirk, but it’s barely a question. They both know it’s been forever, and that barely anything will have been updated since then. Laurent turns away from the board anyways, and grabs onto Damen’s bicep. 

“Teach me about the animals,” he says, and Damen is already melted into an obliging form, pulling him into the next room with a grin. 

There’s an oak nicely shading the window, so the floor is cast in lightly waving specks of shadow around the gold of the wooden floorboards. The information plaques are accompanied now by cases inset into the wall, displaying old and fairly awful taxidermy specimens, and Damen can feel Laurent looking at him to gauge his reaction.

“Clearly these haven’t been updated either,” says Damen, squinting down at the first board. “‘Isthima is home to many species of bird and animal, most of which may be observed from the road or trail, and shot quite quickly and easily with shotgun or standard rifle,’” he reads aloud, and then frowns. “Wow. Pretty sure the whole island was under protection even when I was a kid,” he says.

“It does seem a little . . . archaic,” says Laurent ponderously. “Weren’t you studying birds from here in your master’s?”

“Yeah, a kind of dove,” says Damen, distractedly reading the rest of the blurb. He shivers and looks up at the display case.

Glass eyes stare back at them from gradually slipping mounts. Laurent makes a face. 

“Yeah, sorry this is, uh . . . not great,” says Damen, eyeing a particularly ruffled swift posed in an inelegant swinging dive. Laurent tugs on Damen’s arm, pointing to a mounted nest with a family of Eastern olivaceous warblers. 

“Damen,” Laurent says in a serious tone, the tip of his finger perpendicular to the glass. “This is all amazing.” The sober effect is somewhat lost when his mouth quirks unintentionally into Laurent’s version of a goofy smile, one side of his mouth pulled up slightly higher than the other. Damen laughs back.

They pass a surprising amount of time giggling at the inaccuracies and sad-looking taxidermy, wandering past the fish and marine life posters, a lengthy description of local gulls, and boards detailing the many and varied species of mice and shrews found on the island. It’s getting late by the time they leave the visitor centre, passing back through the main lobby of the building and the still unmanned information desk. 

There’s a public washroom accessible from outside that Laurent ducks into when they exit. Damen stands a little ways away with his back to the building, looking over the gradually goldening brush on the hill slope in the early evening light. He closes his eyes and listens to the rustling and chirping of birds, and just behind, the ever-present sound of the waves against the cliff. He loves this kind of moment, with the space to breathe and be calm, surrounded by the natural landscape and endlessly fascinating things. Damen doesn’t know what his fifteen-year-old self had been thinking on that last trip, when he’d played handheld video games and brooded on the beach. It hadn’t been all bad, though; that trip had featured plenty of Isthiman girls who’d sweetly feel up his arms and give him playful pecks on the cheek before scampering away, making sure he was looking at their backs. It had also had messy kisses with Isthiman boys, hidden behind large trees on a craggy hillside, and shallowly within secluded caves just off the beach.

They hadn’t been his first dalliances into bisexuality, but they’d contained an enormous and lovely kind of reverence, a teenage memory he could hold very close to himself and recall alongside the birds and _phrygana_ and bed and breakfast food. He’d had a girlfriend back in Ios at the same time, if he remembers correctly, but Damen doesn’t think he had felt guilty about anything. He’d probably thought he was hot shit. 

There’s a small scuffling noise behind him, and Damen turns just in time to see a small flock of bats wheel around the top of the cliffside. One lands on the wall of the visitor centre, clinging to the wood. Damen walks over cautiously.

It’s a free-tailed bat, and it looks like it’s just resting, nothing wrong at all. Damen skirts to the side, to look along the side of the building towards it. It’s a very ugly thing, but that’s probably the way it likes to be.

“Hey, buddy,” he says softly to it, inching closer. He knows better than to try to touch it, knows that bats carry all sorts of awful diseases, but it’s undeniably mesmerizing to see its weird nose, and tiny teeth, the way it clutches its entire body to the wood. Laurent emerges from the washroom on the other side.

“Shh! Wait –” hushes Damen, holding up a hand, to which Laurent gives him a bemused expression. He peers at the wall to see what the fuss is about.

“A bat!” exclaims Damen in a whisper, but before anyone can move, the bat pushes off from the wall and flies off. Damen watches it go, enraptured.

Laurent crunches over on the gravel and takes Damen’s hand. “Let’s head back.”

#

“You’re so beautiful,” Damen says, smoothing down the hair by Laurent’s temple with his thumb. Laurent blushes, unsurprisingly, turning his head to the side to try to hide his smile, but Damen only uses the motion to lean in and kiss his cheek. They’re laying down after dinner, not doing much of anything, or at least nothing with any real momentum. That being said, Damen’s been more than half-hard for the last 45 minutes, and he knows it’s because, well, it’s like he said. Laurent’s beautiful. And because he’d made pointed eye contact with Damen before taking his shirt off and climbing on the bed.

“You’re so dumb,” he whispers back, and Damen smiles against Laurent’s neck, then scrapes the skin gently with his teeth, just to hear the tiny hitch in Laurent’s breathing. He feels one of Laurent’s thighs jump slightly too, where Damen’s insinuated himself in between them. The material of Laurent’s shorts shifts on the skin of Damen’s waist, and he gets an idea. 

“Good thing that’s what you’re into,” says Damen, trailing further down to mouth at Laurent’s collarbone, idly rubbing over a nipple with the pad of his finger. Laurent doesn’t retort except to let out a slow, steady breath, and it moves through the air, and the hair and skin on Damen’s chest, to sit on top of his heart. He slides a heavy hand down Laurent’s flank, feels him tilt his head back even more on the pillow.

It feels so overwhelming to Damen to be able to do this, now, to slide his hands steadily over Laurent’s skin, to go pink with the beloved feeling of Laurent’s hands on either side of his head. He feels unbelievably lucky to just feel the fingers in his hair minutely tighten their grip when he takes Laurent’s nipple into his mouth, the muscle underneath it jumping at the sensation. 

He’s not sure if he really feels it, though, when Laurent pushes gently but insistently on the top of his head. Damen looks up to check, only to find Laurent’s head still thrown back, his mouth slightly open.

“Laurent?” He says it quietly, just in case, although in case of what, he’s not quite sure. Laurent rolls his head to the side and grips more firmly at the base of Damen’s skull, and he gets the gist more easily this time, following the tug up to Laurent’s face.

“Kiss me,” he says breathily, and Damen smiles into one, letting Laurent lick along his bottom lip. Laurent pulls back again. “Now take my pants off,” he says, pushing down on Damen’s shoulders. He’s more flushed than usual, which means that he didn’t want to have to say it, but Damen hums out an ‘ _okay_ ’ before he kisses his way back down Laurent’s torso, dipping his tongue into the curves of his stomach muscles. 

Damen undoes Laurent’s shorts with little fanfare, knowing that any grandiosity of the action will only be met with tension. The underwear is kicked off, too, only surprising Damen a little, but he crowds back close to Laurent’s body once everything is out of the way. He only gets one kiss to his hipbone before he feels Laurent shift above him; Damen peeks up through his eyelashes to see Laurent propped up on his elbows, gazing down at him with barely concealed lust, and it sends a sharp thrill along him, straight to his groin, seeing Laurent look simultaneously roused and unaffected. Damen gives him a flirtatious smirk before closing his eyes, leaning down low, and rubbing his cheek along the base of Laurent’s flushed cock, his nose consequently trailing through the hair there. He hears a small inhale above him and smiles into the soft skin in front of him. 

They’ve done this before, Damen blowing Laurent, along with all the other necessities before and niceties directly after. He knows Laurent likes to watch him do it; he described it to Damen back in Ios, blushing furiously but keeping his voice quietly steady as he told him about the warring desires he felt in the act, both the need to keep his eyes open and trained on Damen’s lips around him, and the urge to succumb to the sensation. Damen remembers groaning so loudly at the image that the neighbour in the next apartment had banged on the wall, and Laurent had been laughing too hard to be embarrassed anymore.

Now Damen hooks one forearm under Laurent’s thigh, to hold on to his hip from below, and starts tracing his lips around the shaft. He brings his other hand up too, and the light touches make Laurent’s abs tighten, holding himself as still as possible. Damen understands the feeling, and grips Laurent’s cock more firmly with his hand, tracing his mouth up towards the head, tonguing the leaking slit to coax more wavering sounds out of his boyfriend. It works, naturally, and Laurent’s thighs tense up around Damen’s shoulders. Damen opens his eyes just a fraction to see the hands twisting themselves into the bedclothes, a bare morsel of the writhing pleasure Laurent must be feeling inside.

Damen covers the rest of the head with his lips, starting to suck gently on it, holding the rest in one hand. The velvet skin of Laurent’s cock fills his mouth, and he moans at the hardness, flat and heavy against his tongue. He soon starts to bob his head, sucking along the way back up, tracing the vein with his tongue, and he hears Laurent’s breathing become more frantic. Damen can easily imagine how pink Laurent’s cheeks must be by now, weighted eyelids over piercing blue eyes, sweat gathering along his hairline, and he moans into the next drag up Laurent’s cock, grinding his own eager erection into the mattress. 

Laurent shifts, falling a little further back on his elbows when Damen takes his hand away from Laurent’s cock and down to his balls, cupping them and teasing just behind with the tip of his finger. Damen pauses to trace along Laurent’s hip with his hand to bring him back, he knows Laurent can’t always handle it all at once. It sounds now like he’s close, too, so Damen slows his pace on Laurent’s cock, adding more swipes of his tongue to the even rhythm. His jaw is beginning to ache but like hell if he’s going to stop, now that he can feel the scuff of Laurent’s leg hair on his shoulders, the thighs around him shaking, and Damen takes as much of Laurent into his mouth as he can when he hears the quiet, aborted whine just before he comes. Damen swallows it down, rubbing his hand into the soft skin and hair of Laurent’s lower stomach as he pulses in Damen’s mouth.

He pulls off gently at the same time that Laurent finally, fully, sinks back onto the sheets, his pale arms shivery with goosebumps, limp to his sides. Damen extricates himself from between his thighs, smiling at the unassuming bliss on Laurent’s face, and picks up one of his hands to kiss on the back, the direct opposite to the scratch from the beach. Laurent’s still breathing hard but Damen can tell that he’ll manage to collect himself within a short minute, so instead of reaching for his own painfully hard dick, Damen lays on his side next to Laurent, fingers still brushing his palm.

“Damen,” says Laurent, his voice soft and pleasingly hoarse. He rolls onto his side and looks at Damen a little blearily, still not fully recovered. He makes to pull Laurent to his chest but is intercepted, surprisingly, by Laurent pushing on his shoulder and turning him bodily, so that Damen’s back is to him. 

He’s not sure what Laurent is up to, but he certainly won’t argue. Laurent shoves Damen’s arm forward so that he can hold Damen more closely around his stomach, and Damen’s gut jolts in arousal at the feeling of Laurent’s softening dick up against his ass. He passively wishes he could see Laurent’s face, but it’s tremendously nice to be held like this, even if he hasn’t gotten off yet. 

Laurent huffs onto the back of Damen’s neck, and smooths his open hand slowly up and down his torso, avoiding Damen’s cock. Damen closes his eyes, but doesn’t move to force Laurent’s hand. It’s a close thing, though, when Laurent’s fingers, slightly cold, skirt down over his hip bone, and start raking through the hair there, stopping just before they can reach anything more solidly pleasurable, less tantalising. Damen stops the whine in his throat but arches his hips back, silently pleading. He can feel Laurent smirking on the back of his shoulder.

“Can I try something?” he asks. Damen’s sure this won’t end the teasing but he’ll gladly take whatever Laurent offers.

“Please,” says Damen. “Anything.” 

He feels Laurent pull away from his back for a minute, making the mattress bounce a little as he moves. Laurent’s back in a second, running the same warm hand over his hip bone again, and Damen frowns, until the hand inches back along the side, over the curve of his ass, and down towards the centre. He shifts his own leg forward to open up for Laurent, earning him a kiss on his shoulder blade. Damen sighs into the touch over his perineum, Laurent’s fingers held too firmly to be anything but arousing, and Damen starts to feel hot in his chest again.

Laurent strokes over his hole, and Damen braces his hands more solidly in front of him. He’s done some of this before, been fingered but not fucked, but this is also the first time with Laurent. The fingers pull away again, and Damen rolls his hips ineffectively against the sheets, imagining the heat of Laurent’s cock moving inside him; he’s pretty sure it’s not what’s going to happen, Laurent’s refractory period isn’t that fast, but just the thought that it _could_ happen, sometime in their life together, suddenly has Damen moaning.

“Shhh,” Laurent hushes gently, rubbing his flank with just the palm of his hand. Damen has the sudden urge to turn and face Laurent again, but then he’s pinned by Laurent’s lubed up finger rubbing and then slowly thrusting in, and Damen goes desperate at the feeling. He tries to relax, focussing on the impossibly sweet kisses Laurent is leaving all over his back. 

Eventually, Damen gains some clarity, when it’s not just sheer pressure anymore, and Laurent has a second finger inside. He’s been circling around Damen’s prostate for a while now, and Damen can only breathe erratically around his own keening sounds. 

“Laurent,” he says, quick on a breath. “Can I – _oh_ , can I –” Damen can’t even get the words out, how much he wants to touch himself, but Laurent seems to know, just like he usually does, even when they’re not like this, even when they’re fully clothed and capable of speech.

“Go on,” says Laurent, but then he bites Damen’s shoulder and drives his fingers into Damen’s prostate and Damen is helpless to do anything but groan and slide his own hand around his cock. He’s embarrassingly close already, but who would judge him, considering the heavenly torture that he’s had for who knows how long now. He fists himself, only using the friction, barely moving his hand, focussing all on the sensation on his rim and prostate, and the fading bite mark on his back, and it’s so much, he loves _Laurent_ so much, and Damen gasps something approaching his name right before he comes, all high-pitched and thick with air in his throat. 

Damen only realises how tightly he closed his eyes when he opens them again. All he sees are the off-white sheets on the bed and the dark curtains hanging across the balcony doors. He makes another unintentional noise in his mouth before quickly rolling over, gathering Laurent into his arms. 

“Alright, okay,” says Laurent, muffled into Damen’s chest. He runs his hands up and down Damen’s back, over the kisses and the bite that he left there, and Damen buries his face in Laurent’s hair, letting his heavy breathing slow down again. Their legs are all tangled up together among the sheets, and Damen feels – 

He feels so unbelievably different from every other version of himself before this. The Damen he was when he was with Jokaste would pour too much of himself at once into something, disregarding logic for the immense feeling of being wanted. The Damen he was when he was with Lykaios, with Erasmus, would focus on what made them happy in the moment, but never quite their overarching feelings. The Damen he was with Alexis, with Timon, with Isadora, with Corinne, with all the multitudes of people he barely even kissed, _that_ Damen is leagues away, built upon many times over with fresh perspectives. He’s grateful for every version that set him onwards to the present, too, even the six-year-old who was afraid of snakes, the fifteen-year-old with no good plans, the eighteen-year-old who felt supported but left behind, the twenty-two-year-old brimming with passion. He’s so glad to be with Laurent as the Damen he is now, shaped by him, too. 

“I love you,” Damen whispers into Laurent’s hair, cradling his beautiful blond head with his hands. Laurent moves a hand to clutch onto his shoulder.

“Of course,” says Laurent, like it’s a given, although it’s still somewhat muted by Damen’s arms around him. “Of course,” he says, more quietly this time, and Damen closes his eyes again, and lets a deep breath out. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at brigitttt (personal) and/or brigittttoo (side with writing), and newly on twitter @brigitttt_ . Comments are much appreciated, thank you for reading!


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